Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday April 26, 2010 @01:24PM
from the i'll-order-a-dozen dept.

krou writes "Buried within the New Start treaty, which saw the decommissioning of nuclear warheads, was an interesting provision as a result of Russian demands: the US must 'decommission one nuclear missile for every one' of a new type of weapon called Prompt Global Strike 'fielded by the Pentagon.' The warhead, which is 'mounted on a long-range missile to start its journey,' would be 'capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour. ... It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it would have to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting. ... But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.' The new weapon is in line with Obama's plans 'to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,' and rather focus on conventional ones. The idea is not new, having been first floated under the Bush administration, but was abandoned, mainly because 'Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones.'"

FTFA:
The idea is not new: President George W. Bush and his staff promoted the technology, imagining that this new generation of conventional weapons would replace nuclear warheads on submarines.
In face-to-face meetings with President Bush, Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Mr. Bush and his aides concluded that the Russians were right.
Partly as a result, the idea “really hadn’t gone anywhere in the Bush administration,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has served both presidents, said recently on ABC’s “This Week.” But he added that it was “embraced by the new administration.”

First time I've seen something like this, where Obama is more hawkish on a military matter than Bush ? Man that seems wierd...

First time I've seen something like this, where Obama is more hawkish on a military matter than Bush ? Man that seems wierd...

It shouldn't really be a surprise, generally speaking; Democratic Presidents since Truman have responded to the Republican "soft on defense" dog whistle by acting like kids on a playground who can't back down from a dare.

In this case, though, I'm not sure the "more hawkish" label really sticks. This is about replacing one weapons system with another, not about using either weapon in any particular war. We have such a horror of using nuclear weapons that we're always looking for ways not to use them, and I don't see anything more or less hawkish in destroying an area with a rain of tungsten rods vs. destroying the same area with a nuke. The hawk vs. dove aspect applies more to whether or not we launch a strike at all.

First time I've seen something like this, where Obama is more hawkish on a military matter than Bush ? Man that seems wierd...

I'd actually say he's more capable than Bush was. Bush couldn't deploy this because it risked war with Russia. Obama has skill as a diplomat and convinced them they could inspect the launch site and we'd remove a nuke from our arsenal for each one. Partly this was possible because Obama has a good diplomatic relationship with the Russians. So now we theoretically have another military option. This is why all those hardliners who think diplomacy is weakness are dead wrong.

Diplomacy takes thinking. Hardliners rarely bother with thinking, preferring to repeat the part of history they were taught. You know, the part written by the victors, who were retroactively justifying their use of force and the collateral damage it caused.

In all fairness, Israel isn't exactly a needed ally. To be honest, their even existence depends a lot on our current defense pact. If the US were to revoke its protection of Israel, they may not fall tomorrow as they are fairly adept at defending themselves from attacking neighbors, but the situation would get significantly more precarious for the nation as a whole, as they don't exactly have many neighboring friends, and the actual hostile neighbors have pretty good relations with the other superpower at t

I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but if Israel really is our ally, then shouldn't they be trying to work with us in trying to deal with the Arab nations? It seems lately that they are more interested in throwing more gasoline on a very large fire, and handing us a garden hose to put it out. Allies have a responsibility to keep the peace as well.

Speak for yourself sir. I don't think Arizona is violating human rights. I'm of the mind that _illegal_ immigrants should be kept out and if they do enter, actually punished for doing so. Asking someone for their ID isn't a violation of a human rights, unless you think society in general violates a man's sovereignty.

This is one place where the US is actually pretty lax compared to others. For instance, in the EU it is common to arrest and detain undocumented people. Deportation is not always the way it ends

Human rights don't include being caged behind imaginary lines in the desert.

And this is America. This nation was founded by people who came here without regard to borders. We hold as one of our most cherished mores that this land is open for those who are oppressed or whose opportunities are otherwise exhausted.

We thought we'd fought a war against the idea that a man could own a country, against exclusion and selfishness. We didn't realize that those ideals could arise from within, and that those who would grow those ideals would somehow forget that they were our original enemies.

I am an Arizonan, and I am in favor of the new law. That stated, I agree with many of your points. I generally agree with a VERY strict illegal immigration (note the word "illegal") policy, even though some of our leaders are pushing for it for the wrong reasons (racism and xenophobia). I still feel that these laws are a better alternative to what we have now, i.e. nothing.

I am open to better solutions. Better feasible solutions, that is. Hell, if we actually enforced our employer sanction law this n

Israel is the only thing that unites a lot of these Arab countries, they would just be killing each other instead. The middle eastern people are totally disconnected with the rest of the world and have no idea what is going on in other countries or ever get to visit.

Anyways didn't we have some peace agreement at some camp and we watched as they became even more corrupt when Hamas took over and threw their opposition off the roof tops.Nothing will stop the propaganda over there, especially when you have such ridiculous illiteracy rates and the people cannot make a decision for themselves.

Hopefully rocket attacks stop now that the Israelis have a C-RAM system setup to shoot down the incoming rockets, thereby not needing to retaliate with artillery and air strikes. Than they will not have an excuse, oh wait no... they'll still hate them and keep trying to kill them till the end of time.

Build a big wall and seal it off, let Egypt take care of the problem. Oh wait.... Egypt doesn't want anything to do with them and have closed their border to them as well. Maybe Jordan will help them... oh wait no... they hate Hamas too. Hmmmm.... I think I am seeing a pattern here

The consensus view of the international community is that the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.[1][2][3][4] This view is largely based on UN Security council resolutions, including resolutions 446, 452, 465, 471 and 476 which find the settlements to be illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.[5] The legal arm of the UN, the International Court of Justice, has found the settlements to be illegal under international law.[6]

So another perspective on the situation is that Obama is saying to Israel "Stop violating international law, or we'll stop giving you the free military equipment you're using to support your violations of said law." How do you manage to interpret that as "trying to piss-off our ally", and then use that to suppo

I'm surprised you yanks get so fussed about the occasional friendly fire incident. Because you guys are just so damned good at it.

The UK has had trouble calling the US its ally since Operation Telic, or since the US military shot down a Tornado fighter, or when a US gunship opened fire on British and Afghan Army infantry, or when an American fighter bombed a British Regiment, or when American tanks opened fire on a British recon vehicles. Or when a British armor unit was destroyed by American A-10s...

Shall we move onto your other "allies?" Are you getting my point? Americans are in no position to complain about friendly fire incidents.

Americans are in no position to complain about friendly fire incidents.

The USS Liberty incident is a pretty clear cut, intentional act. Israel wanted the US on it's side of the war, so it disguised it's fighters, and attacked a vessel that prominently displayed a huge US flag. When they were caught, they tried to claim it was mistaken identity, but nobody believes it. It's as much of an open secret as Israel's nukes.

After all, if the warhead contains more than 3 ounces of fluid in any one container, or won't fit in a one liter zip-lock bag, there is no way that the TSA will allow the launch...
If the TSA's word isn't sufficiently reassuring, we could always stencil "No nukes here, we're saving them for Ivan" on all conventional ordnance...

Only problem is that the TSA will want to scan the nukes first... Then we'll have pictures of naked nuke internals getting passed around the 'net!

The US does not want to build nuclear weapons that can only be used defensively (for political reasons), and therefore which act primarily as a deterrent. It wants to build weapons that can be used now.

The US does not only want other countries to be scared to attack the US; it wants other countries to be scared not to do what the US wants them to, as the US may attack tomorrow.

I don't doubt that to be the motivation, but even then it seems overkill since we have military bases all over the world. If a country decides to...misbehave...there's sure to be a base just across the border and also intelligence operatives already working inside the border.

The problem with using ground troops is that casualties make for terrible press. Plus, although we've been working hard to change this, there is only so much profit that defense contractors can wring out of sending some kid to get shot in dustymudholistan.

Gigantic explosions, on the other hand, make every red blooded American's cock stand just a little straighter, and very-high-performance sophisticated single-use delivery vehicles are delightfully expensive...

No...realistically it would be extremely difficult to use nuclear weapons as a response to anything other than a nuclear attack. This system would give us a conventional response that might deter more than just a nuclear attack.

a conventional response... that looks a whole lot like a nuclear response.

This is idiotic, why develop a conventional weapon that looks like a nuke - you know you're never going to be able to use it in any situation that wouldn't warrant a nuke - and in that case, just use the nuke.

It's an almost-balistic-missle based in California... can you imagine any part of the world we might hit that wouldn't result in frenzied meetings in Moscow where Russia has to decide if this is a nuke or not? Juarez maybe? D

The US doesn't 'want' anything, you've anthropomorphized a country. Different people in the US want different things. In this case, it seems Bush did not want these weapons. Obama does. Some people in the US don't want us to have any weapons. Others, (like this guy [slashdot.org]) seem to think the US should be more violent. These people are apparently the ones you are referring to.

Russia really needs to be put at ease about nuclear attack. We simply aren't going to do it. We develop advanced weaponry, but for all intents and purposes, these weapons are just stockpiled, never to be used.

Agreeing to decommission existing missiles is an easy agreeable point. We don't need them anymore. Realistically, there isn't a country in the world that America is politically ready to bomb back to the stone ages. We just like having this stuff because it makes us feel better.

This type of concern isn't new, either. Russia was worried that Reagan's Star Wars missile defense shield would allow America to attack with impunity, but we never had good reason to bomb anyone, much less Russia.

My sincere hope is that Obama can navigate these treacherous waters. It's really his first true test of foreign policy on a global scale. If he can soothe the Russians here, he'll have made huge progress that future generations will reap the benefits of for decades.

If the US can nuke Russia, Russia has to plan for the possibility that the US will nuke Russia. If the US launches missiles that could be aimed at Russia, and that could have nuclear payloads, Russia has to assume that they are and they do. Because they're fucked if they assume good faith and are wrong.

Better never to launch such a missile and best not to have them at all.

Realistically, there isn't a country in the world that America is politically ready to bomb back to the stone ages. We just like having this stuff because it makes us feel better

Well now, there's a whole lot of ways to attack people. Nukes are nasty because they destroy everything in sight and leave it inhabitable for a little while. Chemical weapons are usually more desirable because all the infrastructure is left in place and you can clean it up with specialized teams. Conventional weapons allow you to get the thoroughness of destroying a building without the downsides of destroying a whole city.

Politically, there are a few countries the US would love to clear out and Annex. It's

Russia really needs to be put at ease about nuclear attack. We simply aren't going to do it. We develop advanced weaponry, but for all intents and purposes, these weapons are just stockpiled, never to be used.

Repeat after me: HI-RO-SHI-MA. See, that wasn't so hard. And now you know.

Indeed, the one country that actually used nuclear weapons says 'we won't ever use them... promise'.Not to mention America doesn't just stockpile weapons. Last I checked, they bombed the crap out of Afghanistan and Iraq.I'm not here to debate the morality of the bombings... just that they happened.

I'm not here to debate whether or not the nuking of Hiroshima was warranted or not, but the rest of the world has a slightly longer memory than to think weapons are just kept around...They are used.

Imagine the shoe is on the other foot. Say there's a separatist movement in Kamchatka that's seized some statigic Russian base - maybe even one that has nuclear material. The Kremlin decides the best response is to launch something in a westward direction that looks-like-but-isn't-really a ballistic missile from the caucuses. Do you think that Gates is going to just ho-hum assume that the Russians wouldn't possibly launch a strike on us?

Actually, that's not completely accurate. If you can get an accurate read on the velocity and trajectory (shouldn't be too hard due to the massive amount of heat the missile is putting off) you just launch your ABM at the place the missile will be by the time the ABM reaches intercept altitude. That's how ABMs work against the ballistic missiles that are available presently.

We've seen how well that has worked in the past... (not very well)

Besides, a ballistic missile defense system is designed to either target the launch phase (the missile is still moving relatively slowly) or the ballistic phase (not rockets firing, a simple parabolic trajectory). A decently designed missile could simply avoid the ABM with 0.5 degree course changes. Within one minute at mach 4 (2884mph @ 1500 feet of altitude) that half degree change puts the course of the missile about 1/2 mile off the projected course. The more time you have, the more course changes you can make. Even if you only need to be accurate to 100 meters for the explosion to disable the missile, you only have 78 milliseconds between when the missile enters your (perfectly aimed) kill zone and when it leaves it. Make your missile faster or fly higher, and it's even safer from shoot-down.

Shooting down a missile is hardly a simple task, especially at these speeds.

Not that it is totally relevant, but your comment reminded me of a cartoon I once saw in a book when I was too young to understand what I was reading.

Heavy googling brings back that Bill Mauldin was probably the artist, but I can't find the actual cartoon.

It was one heavily decorated, pompous military type telling another one "We call it our anti-anti-missile-missile". They were standing in front of a missile mounted on a launcher. There was a little arm off it with another missile pointing at the first.

Nuclear arms have formed the backbone of US deterrence strategy for six decades and although the strategy worked during the Cold War, military leaders say they need weapons in their arsenal to deter adversaries who assume that the United States would refrain from taking the extreme step of ordering a nuclear strike. Now the Washington Post reports that as the White House pushes for cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, the Pentagon is developing a powerful nonnuclear weapon to help fill the gap as a new form of d [washingtonpost.com]

1. It looks like a nuclear ballistic missile launch. Every time you fire one, you're risking nuclear war. Russia, China, and any other enemy will see the launch and has to make a very quick decision on what to do. Chances are, it probably wont' be misidentified as a nuclear first strike. Do you really want to take that risk though??? If you have to notify them first, the entire quick strike goes out the window and the entire point of the technology is lost.

2. It's fucking expensive. Having a 1 time use ballistic missile is going to cost 100s of millions to a billion dollars a shot. That figure doesn't even count the R&D money for the program. To allow for quick strike capability, they have to be manned at all times, and ready to fire, so the ongoing "maintenance costs" on it are very high. This is going to be an insanely expensive system.

3. Why? Who are you realistically going to strike with it. Anywhere in the middle east, North Korea, and most of Europe is currently within fighter range and can be hit in relatively short time from conventional fighter/bombers.

North Korea has the air defense to shoot down our aircraft. So does China, with a few more thousand miles of hostile territory to navigate. An unmanned non-nuclear weapon with quick strike capability would be useful there. I don't think we can afford it, but that's another story.

No, you're right. A ballistic weapon is going to be much harder to intercept and nobody can reliably do it currently (or is really trying). That's it's primary benefit balanced out with a ton of negatives.

There are methods of infiltrating enemy airspace that are moderately reliable though.

Well, no not really, But there's no reason these things can't be made nuclear and I'm sure the air force already has a version with a warhead, so for the most part your concern is valid. Other nations won't know if we fired a nuke or not, although if we fire them one at a time, any nation we're worried about can wait it out without compromising a MAD strategy.

It's fucking expensive. Having a 1 time use ballistic missile is going to cost 100s of millions to a billion dollars a shot.

An SR-71 went mach 3, had stealth capabilities, could fly anywhere on a tank of fuel, and had to have life support for pilots. They cost about 35 mill

1. The US agreed in the Bush era that it could be misinterpreted as a nuclear ICBM, however in nuclear war (especially in a preemptive strike scenario), there is not tactical advantage to launching a SINGLE missile at your nuclear foe. So the notion this could be misinterpreted is ridiculous.

2. The military has a blank check, therefore a blank budget. We've long surpassed the millions mark of military toys. Not to mention, do you really think you have a say in what the military wants?

1. The sites would most likely be located away from the current nuclear sites in Montana/North Dakota/Wyoming. Possibly by repurposing one or more of the old Cold War nuclear sites in Missouri or South Dakota, or by using one of the space launch sites in California or Florida.

2. We already have nuclear ICBMs on alert 24/7. Keeping conventional ICBMs really wouldn't take that much extra effort, particularly since most AFBs already have a round-the-clock maintenance group.

3. Say we find out where bin Laden is hiding. Odds are he's not going to be there for long, and 30 minutes is a much better window than the time it would take to scramble a fighter/bomber/UAV and get it into firing range.

Is this even possible? How much fuel would such a thing need to carry to get there at that speed?

Why would you need it? Presumably there's going to be some sort of build-up to the kind of situation where this is needed a you can have an aircraft carrier full of cruise missiles off somebody's coastline in less than a day.

1. It looks like a nuclear ballistic missile launch.That's why it won't be based near existing nuclear missle silos (according to the article).

2.... expensive. True, but at least the missle part is existing technology (Minuteman).

3.... can be hit in relatively short time from conventional fighter/bombers.The new weapon will be at speeds and altitudes that make it much harder, if not impossible, to counter. Fighters and bombers always run the risk of being shot down.

The "trust us, it's not nuclear" is not going to work. It's better than nothing. However, North Korea told you that they only put nuclear missiles on the west coast and the east coast houses conventional only, are you going to believe them?

There are lots of high tech workers that read slashdot. I'm one of them. I decided, while at university, that I was not going to spend my life building weapons. Working on weapons certainly was an opportunity that presented itself when I was getting my degree in the late 80s. I do not want to create weapons because I would have no direct control over whether those weapons were limited to truly righteous causes.

I was offered a job with a mid-level defense contractor when leaving school (mid 80s), but decided against it on moral grounds. I know a few others who made similar decisions, but unfortunately not enough of them...

As an EE, I've had a couple jobs where I worked on weapons. In fact, I've worked on the Conventional Trident Modification program referenced by TFA. It can be a bit of a struggle to deal with the fact that you're building a weapon. There's one rational that got tossed around quite a bit:

The weapons will be built by someone. Would you really want the weapon design to fall only to engineers that couldn't get other jobs? Given that I worked on the guidance parts, I could be glad that I was involved in makin

More specifically, I know several people who are working on the anti-ballistic-missile missiles. The two that I've talked to about the system both are uncomfortable with its potential for destabilizing deterrence, but both are basically okay with working on the missiles themselves because they're both convinced that the system will never work.

But in the broader context, what you're talking about is a continuum of engineer responsibility: engineers who design guns have no control over whether people use them to shoot people, engineers who design cars have no control over whether people use them to run over people, and engineers who design garbage bags have no control over whether people use them to asphyxiate other people. Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are. I'm not sure how one would draw a line at any given point and make a decision that beyond that point, other people were Bad People for continuing to work on those designs.

With all THAT said, I've noticed that a couple of friends who work in weapons systems drink. A lot. A lot more than most people, and a lot more than they used to when they were working on launch systems for satellites or modelling asteroid impact crater formation.

Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are.

Oh please, weapons are built with the purpose of hurting, or forcing someone do something you want (under threat of hurting him). Cars and garbage bags have many other uses besides killing.

Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are.

Oh please, weapons are built with the purpose of hurting, or forcing someone do something you want (under threat of hurting him). Cars and garbage bags have many other uses besides killing.

Speaking as a person who is in favor of gun control legislation, I use guns as tools for protecting my workshop from having holes punched in it by woodpeckers. (Stupid woodpeckers. I build them birdhouses, but they'd rather cut holes in the siding.) In a similar way, peace through strength, or "if we don't have a weapons system, they'll roll in and take us over", has clearly been an effective tactic for North Korea. As such, I believe it's incorrect to say that weapons are built with the purpose of hurt

While I don't work on weapons themselves, I do work on systems used in conjunction with weapons used in war.

My belief: advanced sensors, radars, targeting, intelligence, etc saves more lives than it costs. If the military has a cost-effective way to ensure when they fire a weapon that they are killing enemy combatants and not civilians, and before the enemy can get a shot off, it's a good situation for all but our enemies. It's good for civilians who have a reduced fear of accidentally being bombed or shot. It's good for our servicemen (of which I have 2 cousins and several friends) who can rest more easily knowing that they no longer need to walk a razors edge between killing innocents and waiting to be fired upon first.

At the end of the day, I can't stop a war. I can make that war safer for our troops and civilians around the world, though, so you can bet your ass that's what I'm going to do.

Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a targetGeeze.. if the 'designers' are going to be that un-subtle, they should just say it already: Iran/Afghanistan.

(unless they honestly want to suggest that the sharp turn being made is to the left, toward UAE/Qatar/Saudi Arabia)

...capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour...It would travel through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound...

Something is not the right order of magnitude here. 12,500 miles/1 hour = 12,500 mph = Mach 16. To me, 16 is more than "several".

I don't know of anything operational (SCRAM isn't) other than a rocket that can propel something that fast. And a rocket with enough thrust and low enough weight wouldn't be able to fire for an hour.

From that I suspect the entire flight profile isn't in the atmosphere. Something like: an ICBM delivers a ramjet-powered cruise missile somewhere in the vicinity of a target. The missile then flies the rest of the way.

As someone else pointed out...jeez. How expensive is that? Why not fire a missile from a B52 or a ship? Last I heard the US still had lots of both of those all over the globe. A Mach 5 ramjet could go 3840 miles in an hour so your platform wouldn't even have to be that close. Way out in the middle of the Indian Ocean is within that distance from Kabul, for example.

Yeah seriously. Our efforts to blow stuff up in Iraq and Afghanistan have only worsened our image in the Middle East and created even more rabid terrorists. On the other hand, the development of super-advanced conventional weaponry is a great way to warn off any prospective enemies who might be thinking of attacking. Just as long as you don't start stockpiling them.

The problem has never been that we blow too much shit up. The problem has been that we don't blow up ENOUGH!

I have always been a proponent of the Master of Orion foreign policy theory. You live in peace ad harmony with your neighbors, until they do something to piss you off. You know, they attack your colonies, steal too much technology, crash their star cruisers into a couple of towers, whatever.

You then send your fleet to bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants... then you simply bring in your own colonists to settle the area and call it good.

Once the other countries learn that you're serious and not screwing around anymore, they don't dare pick a fight with you.

The problem comes when your civilization declines, and you no longer have the resources to smash your neighbors into oblivion. The Roman Empire successfully used your strategy (kill all troublemakers/) for ~600 years until they eventually reached a stage where they no longer had enough strength to do that. Then their enemies invaded & took the remaining pieces of the crumbling empire.

I haven't gotten around to reading the Rome entry on wikipedia yet, so I'm curious, what happened to rome's strength? Poor leadership? poor training? bad morale? lack of loyalty? too many occupying troops and not enough economy to support it?

600 years is realistically about 6x as long as the US has been a world power, so I'd say that Rome sets the bar there.

Poor leadership because you could kill your way to Emperor. So every new Emperor was a target of the Army leadership, family members, etc

Slavery took away jobs from entire classes

Unhappy classes because there were no jobs had to be kept happy with massive spending on things like games, tax free holidays, free food, etc.

Lack of technological progress, the Western Empire stagnated under constant attack and couldn't progress, the Eastern Empire did better but again it was hammered by attacks on the frontiers.

Over expansion and under population in the provinces.

The United States could have gone the same way, if the expansion to the west had been coupled with constant warfare from massed Indian Tribes, Canada and Mexico all at the same time the American Civil War through Spanish-American War happened.

- Loss or representative Democracy, which had given the masses a "stake" in Rome's success but after the Senate became an essentially powerless entity, the People no longer cared if Rome survived or not.

- Exclusions from the army. Rome had been strong because of required duty by the citizens in the army, but eventually most of Italy was exempt from that duty, thereby forcing the army to come from non-Romans in the surrounding provinces. These non-Romans had a bad habit of turning agains

Then again, the Romans didn't have the weaponry to destroy the entire planet several times over. I think "world wars" are pretty much history for the human race until we actually start having wars *over* worlds...

Assuming you're not kidding, there are two major problems with this approach. The first is a matter of morality: "bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants" may be a lot of fun in a game, but in real life it's mass murder on a scale that not even the most bloody-minded conquerors in history have ever attempted, and that is really not a contest any sane nation wants to win.

Okay, let's assume that the morality of it doesn't bother you (and it probably doesn't, although I suspect if you were ever confronted close-up with the results of such an action, your opinion would change.) The second problem is practical. Could we do what you propose to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran? Maybe we could... but we are not the only country in the world with the capacity to do such a thing, and be assured, the rest of the world will take notice. We get too close to the borders of Russia or China with such a campaign (BTW, take a look at a map and notice just how far west China's borders go) and we are pretty much guaranteeing an all-out nuclear exchange of the sort everyone was more than halfway expecting all through the Cold War. You may be too young to remember what living under the nuclear hammer was like, and just how high the level of mutual paranoia was. Me, I was stationed in Europe when the Wall came down; trust me, we don't want to go back there.

And Russia and China aren't the only major powers we'd have to worry about if we started down that road. Japan, the UK, Germany, India, France... they're all pretty friendly to us these days. That would change in a heartbeat if the US turned into a latter-day version of Genghis Khan's Mongolia. And all of them either have nuclear stockpiles or the ability to produce them quickly, along with delivery systems. The US, or any other country that tried this approach, would quickly find itself isolated in a hostile world full of countries just itching to scorch its cities to the ground, and willing to take the risk of receiving the same treatment in return.

The US is unquestionably stronger militarily than any other country, but we aren't stronger than everybody, and this is a good thing. There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing. The rest of the world will not allow it, and for the first time in human history, the concept of "the rest of the world" makes a difference in the thinking of those who would follow in the bloody footsteps of emperors. Not because the human race is any wiser or more moral than it used to be, but because there is no other choice.

Very good and well-thought out post. However, there is one point I disagree with:

There will never be another Alexander, another Caesar, another Genghis Khan, another Napoleon, another Hitler, and this is also a good thing.

You can never say never. While the world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology, that does not mean some future person won't attempt (and succeed) in utilizing that technology. In addition, the real challenge is to get people to follow you - if you can build up people, everything else just falls into your hands. (For example, look at Hitler. In any "normal" environment, that would not have happened. But the people of Germany were discontent and he played to that and, as such, received FAR more power than he ever would have otherwise.)

While the world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology, that does not mean some future person won't attempt (and succeed) in utilizing that technology.

Not only that, but there is also a very real possibility that our tech will decline some time in the future. We might hit a rough patch in the next 40 years as oil runs out--it's not only important as a fuel source but in making plastics and paving roads. Any number of disasters could wipe out large swathes of humanity and some amount of practical knowledge will be taken with them.

Who knows what things will look like 10,000 or even 1,000 years from now? I would be willing to believe that another Alexande

I think the largest contributing factor to Hitler's rise to power and world war 2, was the Allies' actions after world war 1. The Treaty of Versailles pretty much placed all blame for WW1 on Germany, neutered them politically, and ordered them to pay 132 billion marks in war reparations. this contributed to hyperinflation in the 20s, and the cost of living skyrocketed. It's not really surprising that the people got pissed off. ironically, most of this was in order to prevent Germany starting another war.

Well, nowadays we consider it good style to hold people responsible to their words and actions, not those of their forefather. What point are you trying to make by criticizing his quite rational stance on grounds of his ancestry? Besides, while the settlement of the Americas undoubtedly was accompanied by a genocide, it hardly was a total war on the scale the GP proposed by making a political argument from a game.

and it's hardly a unique situation. With the exception of the people involved in each first migration, every piece of land on the planet was colonized in the same way by waves of people slaughtering the previous inhabitants. The people we often call natives, weren't.

The problem has never been that we blow too much shit up. The problem has been that we don't blow up ENOUGH!

I have always been a proponent of the Master of Orion foreign policy theory. You live in peace ad harmony with your neighbors, until they do something to piss you off. You know, they attack your colonies, steal too much technology, crash their star cruisers into a couple of towers, whatever.

You then send your fleet to bomb your enemies from orbit until their land is clear of any buildings, population, dogs, pine cones, or ants... then you simply bring in your own colonists to settle the area and call it good.

Once the other countries learn that you're serious and not screwing around anymore, they don't dare pick a fight with you.

Where's the problem?

I say we lift off and nuke the site from orbit...it's the only way to be sure.

What? and leave baliwood to make all the blockbuster movies? not likely!

Along those lines, aside from Canada's pop musicians, and England who produces good rock band on occasions, where is the rest of the world supposed to get good music from if America gets wiped off the map?

This brings up an interesting point. I'm starting to suspect that the reason why the United States is bending over backwards of copy write lobbyists (an pressuring everyone else to do the same) is because that's rapidly becoming the only thing they have. they've gone through their natural resources, all of their manufacturing is going to China (including high tech), they've just conclusively proven that they can't be trusted with finance, their car companies were pretty much built on the assumption that the

Naw, not a big problem, I don't recall losing many of those games once I used that strategy. Most of the games I lost where when I tried to sit at home and micromanage up the best cities I could while the terrori.. I mean the klackons developed a horde of inferior starships to overwhelm me.

On the other hand, the "sit at home and develop awesome cities" strategy was my primary strategy for Civilization games, so I'm not really sure which strategy would work best in the long run.

>>>Our efforts to blow stuff up in Iraq and Afghanistan have only worsened our image in the Middle East and created even more rabid terrorists

I could have told you that on 9/12.In fact I did tell people that, saying going to war is not the solution,but at the time people were thinking like animals. All they could see was "red" and revenge.

If you're going to risk billions of dollars and millions of lives, you don't do it for just 1 or 2 criminals. That's just ridiculous and totally disproportionate. Plus all it did was create a lot of orphaned children who will grow-up and want to kill Americans & Europeans. The problem is now worse, not better.

A wiser course would be to mirror what we do in our own homes. Get better locks to keep out criminals. i.e. Close the borders, in order to prevent another Bin Laden from sneaking through, unless they first had permission (visa).

It's so easy. All we have to do is give up our remaining freedom (because it would require a police state to protect us from this form of terrorism), and problem solved.
I think we've been making a bit of a mistake in Afghanistan, in that we haven't done a good job of laying out why we're there (that is, keeping it from being a place where our enemies plan and train against us), and haven't closed down the enemy's sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan. But I don't think it's reasonable to treat this as somet

I beg to differ. While it may have hurt relations a little, the fundamental problem between the US and the parts of the world filled with fundamentalist terrorist-happy Muslims is that the US is friends with Israel. That's the elephant in the room, the root cause of 9/11 (did you listen to a thing that those guys actually said?) and, honestly, I think the problem won't go away until someone nukes Israel (though I admit conventional warfare could do it too). And that's a tragedy, by the way.

Which is basically what I've been saying locally for about a decade. The people we're having the most trouble with internationally don't just hate The West, they hate ANYONE that doesn't actively join their crusade. It's not enough to leave them alone, if you don't actively assist them in their genocidal goals you're going to be considered a target.

Basically extremist islam right now is pretty much the same problem with US right now, "You're with us, or you're against us."

One variant of the "schizoid defense" (against the inherent violence of the world) involves dissociating one's self from violent sentiments or tools. One stops watching violent movies, for example, stops getting angry, and relinquishes ownership of any weapons.

The mind tells itself a story that by distancing one's self from violence in every ostensible form, one protects one's self from having a violent encounter.

Of course this story is false. The violence finds you. Criminals retain their weapons, and t